Posts Tagged ‘PNW’

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is urging the Port of San Francisco and the city’s Department of the Environment to develop policies that will bar the transportation and export of hazardous fuel materials in San Francisco.

Supervisors Malia Cohen and Scott Wiener introduced the resolution to prohibit the movement of crude oil, coal, and petroleum coke (petcoke) through San Francisco, citing safety concerns, dangers to the environment, public-health hazards, economic pitfalls, and public opposition. The resolution passed the board unanimously last week.

“San Francisco has always been known as a city at the forefront of environmental change. This resolution barring the handling of polluting, climate-warming fuels proves yet again that it is a city that leads the world in envisioning a better way to live,” said Stacey Geis, Earthjustice managing attorney of the California office. Read the rest of this entry »

GAO’s report (GAO-14-740), released on 26 September, found that recent trends in freight flows, if they continue as anticipated, “may exacerbate congestion issues in communities, particularly along certain corridors.”

As of 2012, the latest year for which data is available, national freight rail and truck traffic had approached the levels reached in 2007, prior to the economic recession, the report continues. “Certain trends related to specific commodities have affected rail flows, including increases in domestic crude oil production. A key negative impact of increasing freight flows is congestion at highway-rail grade crossings, where road traffic must wait to cross the tracks when trains are passing.” Read the rest of this entry »

The ports of Seattle and Tacoma received nearly $2 million In grants under a new Environmental Protection Agency initiative that recognizes U.S. ports for improving environmental performance and sustainability.

It’s a great move because port areas generate some of the worst diesel emission problems in the nation, whether it’s from the cargo ships that dock at terminals without powering down their engines, the terminal equipment that services the ships, or the hundreds of trucks moving to and from terminals to load and unload the cargo. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been 25 years since the Exxon Valdez disaster. It’s a major reason for this blog’s existence; I’ve learned that ExxonMobil is bigger and more powerful than ever, and it’s grip on our lives is unrelenting.

ExxonMobil is an empire with it’s own set of rules; it does nothing that will weaken that empire.

A case in point from Friends of the Earth:

Despite the tragic damage to the ocean, wildlife and people, to say nothing of the score of spills since 24 March 1989, the oil industry and its supporters in Congress are pressuring the Obama administration to rescind a 40-year old ban on the export of U.S. crude oil. Lifting the ban would unleash a flood of oil tankers on our ports, significantly increasing the risk of another disaster.

“The Obama administration is turning a blind eye to the anticipated climate and environmental impacts of exporting fossil fuels like Bakken shale and Powder River Basin coal from the U.S., while at the same time touting a climate plan that claims to reduce our damaging impact here at home,” said Marcie Keever, Friends of the Earth’s Oceans and vessels program director. “On top of that, the administration may actually be considering lifting the ban on U.S. crude oil exports, which would exponentially increase climate change and the risks of more Exxon Valdez and Gulf oil spill disasters.”

An infographic, “Gateway to Extinction,” from Friends of the Earth and Healthy Planet/Healthy People details the potential threats posed by the proposed fossil fuel export terminal and pipeline projects in the Northwest. It also shows how lifting the ban would exponentially increase those threats.

The nation’s first offshore wind farm on the Pacific Coast cleared a crucial federal hurdle when Seattle’s Principle Power received approval to move forward on a commercial lease for the proposed $200 million, 30 Mw project.

Principle Power received the go-ahead last month from a Department of the Interior agency to lease 15 square miles of federal waters 18 miles from Coos Bay, Oregon. If the lease request gets final approval, the WindFloat Pacific project would anchor the first offshore turbines in federal waters on the West Coast. It also would be the first in the nation to use triangular floating platforms instead of single piles driven into the ocean floor. Read the rest of this entry »

Ratepayers in Washington State could save $1.7 billion over 17 years if the Columbia Generating Station (CGS) nuclear power plant at Hanford is closed.

A recent 212-page economic analysis from McCullough Research of Portland, OR notes that the CGS on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the only nuclear facility that was actually completed out of the five plants begun there during the long and tangled history of Hanford. In addition, it contains a General Electric boiling water reactor that’s similar to those that were destroyed during the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. Read the rest of this entry »

Before this difficult year fades into history, I wanted to call attention to an excellent development, care of a local PNW company you may have heard of, Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft’s 2013 “Citizenship Report” describes an ambitious agenda that features making its operations carbon neutral, and using the “power of technology” to promote human rights.

The software giant’s fiscal year 2013 was pivotal on those points, CEO Steven A. Ballmer wrote, because it took the “first big, bold steps” in it its transformation to a devices and services company and in its citizenship work. Read the rest of this entry »